Where does Sweden stand today?

What is happening in Sweden, that one-time haven of tranquility that despatched its White Buses to bring back Scandinavian survivors of the Nazi death camps as well as a large number of European Jews who somehow survived the Holocaust?

It was Sweden that once gave life and hope to thousands of tattered remnants of a vibrant Jewish community in Europe before the Nazis took over and changed the course of history for ever.

For an up-to-date perspective of Sweden's current status and the way this country is now perceived abroad, read the speech given today by Tomas Sandell, Founding Director of the European Coalition for Israel, at a hearing in the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm and reprinted in the Jerusalem Post .

Sandell's speech raises concerns about double standards, wilful blindness, political correctness in absurdum and a desperate unwillingness to confront savagery whenever it takes the guise of fanatical political Islamism.

In the aftermath of the massacre in Fort Hood carried out by a US Armed Forces officer of Palestinian Muslim descent crying "Allah u'Akhbar" (God is great) as he executed his victims, and the Obama administration's knee-jerk response that whatever and whoever was responsible, it had nothing to do with Islam or any Muslims anywhere, Sandell's words are driven home all the more forcefully.

Caroline Glick writes as follows of US President Barack Hussein Obama's reaction (his middle name Hussein is a variant spelling of the terrorist's surname Malik Nadal Hassan): "It hurts that Barack Hussein Obama's first statement about the massacre at Fort Hood was so emotionally cut off from what happened. It hurts that he thought the most important thing to say about the massacre is that we mustn't jump to conclusions about the motivations of the terrorist who killed his fellow soldiers despite the fact that he was screaming Allah Akhbar as he shot them."

Recently Swedish-born poet Mohammed Omar announced that he will form a new Swedish national party to fight the next elections, and that this party has just one single item on its agenda - anti-Zionism and the destruction of the State of Israel. The the trends are thus very worrying indeed. The more so since his party aims at uniting Far-Left, Far-Right and fanatical Islamist elements under one banner.

Next door in Norway, meantime, the racist hounding of the world's sole Jewish nation continues unabated at the same time as grossly indecent human rights abuses in large swathes of the Muslim and Arab worlds are routinely disregarded. CAMERA reports on the latest drive to implement an academic boycott of Israel.

The attacks continue, on our doorstep, in our own backyard and on a global scale.

A few days ago, Iran's latest shipment of 600 tonnes of rockets and other war materiel to terrorist organisation Hizbollah in the Lebanon was intercepted by Israel. This shipment and others like it are in breach of UN resolutions 1701 and 1747. In a rare move, the US condemned Iran's flagrant breach of UN resolutions. Having in addition just reneged on all previous fledgling deals regarding its nuclear ambitions, Iran's Ahmadinejad took a break from Holocaust denial to counter the US stance with the announcement that he has the key to world peace:

The US has to choose: support Iran, or support Israel. No other option is on the table.

I wonder if the US President reads the press.


Related articles from this site:
The View from Sweden
Like Cockroaches, Anti-Semitism is Difficult to Eradicate
Tensions in Swedish Society
An Illiterate Foreign Minister?
Israel Does Not Exist - According to Swedish News Agency TT

The “Palestinian-Israeli Conflict”? Get a grip on the facts!

The biggest bluff in modern times: the myth of a “Palestinian-Israeli” conflict.

From the very outset to this very day, the conflict has been about an entirely different issue, whose least important ingredients are Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews, today’s Israelis.

From the very outset to this very day, the real issue has been the centuries-old conflict between radical Islam with its clearly identified anti-Semitic charter, on the one hand, and Jews on the other.

Institutionalised anti-Semitism. Nothing else.

The region of Palestine, first under the rule of the Ottoman Turks and then under British mandate, permitted immigration of Jews, Christians and Muslims. Most of the immigrant Muslims and Christians were Arabs from the surrounding areas, today’s Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and Sudan. Most of the immigrant Jews came from these same countries, as well as the crescent of North Africa and Europe, including Eastern Europe/Russia.

More than 60 years ago, following repeated and increasingly horrendous Arab-Muslim pogroms and massacres of Jews in the name of Islam, the UN determined that the area would be divided into one Jewish country with a very large minority of Arab Muslims and Christians, and one Arab country from which Jews were to be effectively ethnically cleansed. The Jews accepted and the state of Israel was reborn on a small portion of the land that over the course of several centuries had been a Jewish kingdom with capitals in Jerusalem and, periodically, in Hebron.

The Arabs refused. They had never previously had or indeed expressed any interest in independence or a state in any part of this region, let alone a capital city. However, when they discovered that the price of their independence, their own state and a capital city was the existence of a Jewish state as well, they baulked. Instead, they went to war, aided by invading Arab armies financed by much of the Muslim world.

The “refusal front” in the Arab world has thus far steadfastly turned down all invitations to peace. On the contrary, the Arab world’s relations with Egypt and Jordan, both of which have signed extremely frigid peace treaties with Israel, are very strained indeed. Talking to Jews simply isn’t the done thing. Read the article by Israel’s former ambassador to Egypt, Zvi Mazel, on the subject.

In this atmosphere of pan-Arab and pan-Islamic resistance to peace and normalisation of relations, it is therefore hardly surprising to read that Israel recently bombed a convoy of trucks carrying weapons destined for Hamas. The convoy was bombed in Sudan. Far from Gaza, but in the mindset of the Arab refusal front there are no insurmountable distances when the cause is such a noble one. The missiles and other weapons were supplied by Iran, for transport via Sudan and Egypt to Gaza, where Hamas would as before fire them from within Palestinian residential areas, schools and hospitals, at civilian Israelis in residential areas, schools and hospitals.

The refusal front’s logic is as unfathomable as it is cynical and manipulative.

None of this is particularly surprising. Led by Iran, these countries doggedly pursue a policy whose main aim is the destruction of the democratic state of Israel. There are many countries that openly resist the destruction of the state of Israel. However, there is not a single Arab or Muslim state in the list of nations who oppose this disgraceful – and illegal – policy.

For example, the USA, Britain, Norway, Germany, France, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands and Denmark recently signed an agreement on the application of “non-coercive” means to counteract the flow of Iranian weapons to Hamas in Gaza for the terror organisation’s continued war of attrition on Israel’s civilian population. Thus far, over 10,000 missiles have been fired from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel over a period of eight years. These countries have agreed a strategy of using diplomacy, the military, intelligence-gathering and police resources to prevent continued arms shipments from Iran to Gaza. Israel’s strike against the weapons convoy in Sudan can be seen against the background of this exchange of information and this increasingly proactive stance among the world’s democracies.

Sweden is the world’s per capita biggest provider of “aid” to the Palestinian cause. Swedish “aid” simply frees up the corresponding funds in the Palestinian budget for the purchase of arms with which to attack Israeli civilians.

What is interesting to note in the context of international cooperation to freeze the ongoing violence emanating from Gaza is that Sweden is not a party to agreement. Its neighbours Norway and Denmark are.

Sweden and the Arab world’s refusal front appear to be on a joint mission. Sweden is standing increasingly alone.

Alone in Europe, that is to say. In the Arab world, Sweden is the absolute darling of dictators you would never allow your daughter to marry and dictatorial regimes that would never give your daughter a visa to visit in the first place.

All of which brings into even sharper focus the southern Swedish city of Malmö which recently tried to ban Jews from participating in the international Davis Cup tennis tournament because the Jews were Israelis. It puts the spotlight on Swedish Communist Party (recently renamed the Socialist Party) Lars Ohly and the keffiyeh he proudly wore showing the whole of Israel eradicated and replaced by a single Muslim Palestine. And it magnifies the callous viciousness of Swedish Greens Party member and European parliamentarian Per Gahrton and his deliberate lies about “a handful of enthusiastic youngsters” when in fact several hundred adult Swedish Muslims recently rioted in the streets shouting racist slurs against Jews and threatening that Islam would once again rise and massacre the Jews as in Mohammed’s heyday 1300 years ago.

Sweden is well on its way to becoming the first European member of the Arab League.

Read also:
Websites/blogs/articles in English:
JPost, 2, 3, 4, YNet, CommentaryMagazine, NationalPost, AFP, Zvi Mazel, Savo Heleta

From this website in English:
IlyaMeyer, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

Websites/blogs/articles in Swedish:
Utrikesbloggen, DN, FiM, 2, 3, MXp, Erixon, Sapere, 2

From this website in Swedish:
IlyaMeyer, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7